Keith's chin was still high and his gaze still straight ahead when he
reached the foot of Harrington Hill. Perhaps that explained why he did
not see the two young misses on the fence by the side of the road
until a derisively gleeful shout called his attention to their
presence.

"Well, Keith Burton, I should like to know if you're blind!"
challenged a merry voice.

The boy turned with a start so violent that the girls giggled again
gleefully. "Dear, dear, did we scare him? We're so sorry!"

The boy flushed painfully. Keith did not like girls--that is, he said
he did not like them. They made him conscious of his hands and feet,
and stiffened his tongue so that it would not obey his will. The
prettier the girls were, the more acute was his discomfiture.
Particularly, therefore, did he dislike these two girls--they were the
prettiest of the lot. They were Mazie Sanborn and her friend Dorothy
Parkman.

Mazie was the daughter of the town's richest manufacturer, and Dorothy
was her cousin from Chicago, who made such long visits to her Eastern
relatives that it seemed sometimes almost as if she were as much of a
Hinsdale girl as was Mazie herself.

To-day Mazie's blue eyes and Dorothy's brown ones were full of
mischief.

"'Course he can't, if he's blind!" Keith showed irritation now, and
pulled not too gently at the arm still held in Mazie's firm little
fingers.

"Blind! Ugghh!" interposed Miss Dorothy, shuddering visibly. "Oh, how
can you bear to look at him, Keith Burton? I couldn't!"

A sudden wave of red surged over the boy's face. The next instant it
had receded, leaving only a white, strained terror.

"Well, he ain't to blame for it, if he is blind, is he?" chattered the
boy, a bit incoherently. "If you're blind you're blind, and you can't
help yourself." And with a jerk he freed himself from Mazie's grasp
and hurried down the road toward home.

But when he reached the bend of the road he turned and looked back.
The two girls had returned to their perch on the fence, and were
deeply absorbed in something one of them held in her hand.

"And she said she couldn't bear--to look at 'em--if they were blind,"
he whispered. Then, wheeling about, he ran down the road as fast as he
could. Nor did he stop till he had entered his own gate.

"Well, Keith Burton, I should like to know where you've been," cried
the irate voice of Susan Betts from the doorway.

"I didn't want you. Your pa wanted you. But, then, for that matter,
he's always wantin' you. Any time, if you look at him real good an'
hard enough to get his attention, he'll stare a minute, an' then say:
'Where's Keith?' An' when he gets to the other shore, I suppose he'll
do it all the more."

"Oh, no, he won't--not if it's talking poetry. Father never talks
poetry. What makes you talk it so much, Susan? Nobody else does."

"Lan' sakes, child, I don't know, only I jest can't help it. Why,
everything inside of me jest swings along to a regular tune--kind of
keeps time, like. It's always been so. Why, Keithie, boy, it's been my
joy--There, you see--jest like that! I didn't know that was comin'. It
jest--jest came. That's all. I can make a rhyme 'most any time. Oh, of
course, most generally, when I write real poems, I have to sit down
with a pencil an' paper, an' write 'em out. It's only the spontaneous
combustion kind that comes all in a minute, without predisposed
thinkin'. Now, run along to your pa, child. He wants you. He's been
frettin' the last hour for you, jest because he didn't know exactly
where you was. Goodness me! I only hope I'll never have to live with
him if anything happens to you."

The boy had crossed the room; but with his hand on the door knob he
turned sharply.

"Lan' sakes, child, how you do hold a body up! I meant what I said--
that I didn't want the job of livin' with your pa if anything happened
to you. You know as well as I do that he thinks you're the very axle
for the earth to whirl 'round on. But, there, I don't know as I
wonder--jest you left, so!"

The boy abandoned his position at the door, and came close to Susan
Betts's side.

"That's what I've always wanted to know. Other boys have brothers and
sisters and--a mother. But I can't ever remember anybody only dad.
Wasn't there ever any one else?"

"No, child. When they opened the door of Heaven to let you out she
slipped in, poor lamb. An' then you was all your father had left. So
of course he dotes on you. Goodness me, there ain't no end to the fine
things he's goin' ter have you be when you grow up."

At the end of the hall upstairs was the studio. Dad would probably be
there. Keith knew that. Dad was always there, when he wasn't sleeping
or eating, or out tramping through the woods. He would be sitting
before the easel now "puttering" over a picture, as Susan called it.
Susan said he was a very "insufficient, uncapacious" man--but that was
when she was angry or tried with him. She never let any one else say
such things about him.

Still, dad was very different from other dads. Keith had to
acknowledge that--to himself. Other boys' dads had offices and stores
and shops and factories where they worked, or else they were doctors
or ministers; and there was always money to get things with--things
that boys needed; shoes and stockings and new clothes, and candy and
baseball bats and kites and jack-knives.

Dad didn't have anything but a studio, and there never seemed to be
much money. What there was, was an "annual," Susan said, whatever that
was. Anyway, whatever it was, it was too small, and not nearly large
enough to cover expenses. Susan had an awful time to get enough to buy
their food with sometimes. She was always telling dad that she'd got
to have a little to buy eggs or butter or meat with.

And there were her wages--dad was always behind on those. And when the
bills came in at the first of the month, it was always awful then: dad
worried and frowning and unhappy and apologetic and explaining; Susan
cross and half-crying. Strange men, not overpleasant-looking, ringing
the doorbell peremptorily. And never a place at all where a boy might
feel comfortable to stay. Dad was always talking then, especially, how
he was sure he was going to sell this picture. But he never sold it.
At least, Keith never knew him to. And after a while he would begin a
new picture, and be sure he was going to sell that.

But not only was dad different from other boys' dads, but the house
was different. First it was very old, and full of very old furniture
and dishes. Then blinds and windows and locks and doors were always
getting out of order; and they were apt to remain so, for there was
never any money to fix things with. There was also a mortgage on the
house. That is, Susan said there was; and by the way she said it, it
would seem to be something not at all attractive or desirable. Just
what a mortgage was, Keith did not exactly understand; but, for that
matter, quite probably Susan herself did not. Susan always liked to
use big words, and some of them she did not always know the meaning
of, dad said.

To-day, in the hallway, Keith stood a hesitant minute before his
father's door. Then slowly he pushed it open.

The man at the easel sprang to his feet. He was a tall, slender man,
with finely cut features and a pointed, blond beard. Susan had once
described him as "an awfully nice man to take care of, but not worth a
cent when it comes to takin' care of you." Yet there was every
evidence of loving protection in the arm he threw around his boy just
now.

"Want you? I always want you!" he cried affectionately. "Look! Do you
remember that moss we brought home yesterday? Well, I've got its twin
now." Triumphantly he pointed to the lower left-hand corner of the
picture on the easel, where was a carefully blended mass of greens and
browns.

"Oh, yes, why, so't is." (Keith had long since learned to see in his
father's pictures what his father saw.) "Say, dad, I wish't you'd tell
me about--my little brothers. Won't you, please?"

"And, Keith, look--do you recognize that little path? It's the one we
saw yesterday. I'm going to call this picture 'The Woodland Path'--and
I think it's going to be about the very best thing I ever did."

Keith was not surprised that his question had been turned aside:
questions that his father did not like to answer were always turned
aside. Usually Keith submitted with what grace he could muster; but
to-day he was in a persistent mood that would not be denied.

"Dad,why won't you tell me about my brothers? Please, what were their
names, and how old were they, and why did they die?"

"Ned was seven and Jerry was four, and they were the light of my eyes,
and--But why do you make me tell you? Isn't it enough, Keith, that
they went, one after the other, not two days apart? And then the sun
went out and left the world gray and cold and cheerless, for the next
day--your mother went."

With a start the man turned. His arm tightened again. His eyes grew
moist and very tender.

"Anywhere? You're everywhere now, my boy. I'm afraid, at the first,
the very first, I didn't like to see you very well, perhaps because
you were all there was left. Then, little by little, I found you were
looking at me with your mother's eyes, and touching me with the
fingers of Ned and Jerry. And now--why, boy, you're everything. You're
Ned and Jerry and your mother all in one, my boy, my boy!"

Keith stirred restlessly. A horrible tightness came to his throat, yet
there was a big lump that must be swallowed.

"Er--that--that Woodland Path picture is going to be great, dad,
great!" he said then, in a very loud, though slightly husky, voice.
"Come on, let's---"

From the hall Susan's voice interrupted, chanting in a high-pitched
singsong:

"Dinner's ready, dinner's ready,
Hurry up, or you'll be late,
Then you'll sure be cross and heady
If there's nothin' left to ate."

Keith gave a relieved whoop and bounded toward the door. Never had
Susan's "dinner-bell" been a more welcome sound. Surely, at dinner,
his throat would have to loosen up, and that lump could then be
swallowed.

"How impossible Susan is," he sighed. "I believe she grows worse every
day. Still I suppose I ought to be thankful she's good-natured--which
that absurd doggerel of hers proves that she is. However, I should
like to put a stop to it. I declare, I believe I will put a stop to
it, too! I'm going to insist on her announcing her meals in a proper
manner. Oh, Susan," he began resolutely, as he flung open the dining-
room door.

Susan said nothing. But was there a quiet smile on her lips as she
left the room? If so, neither the man nor the boy seemed to notice it.

As for the very obvious change of attitude on the part of the man--
Keith had witnessed a like phenomenon altogether too often to give it
a second thought. And as for the doggerel that had brought about the
situation--that, also, was too familiar to cause comment.

It had been years since Susan first called them to dinner with her
"poem"; but Keith could remember just how pleased she had been, and
how gayly she had repeated it over and over, so as not to forget it.

"Oh, of course I know that 'ate' ain't good etiquette in that place,"
she had admitted at the time. "It should be 'eat.' But 'eat' don't
rhyme, an' 'ate' does. So I'm goin' to use it. An' I can, anyhow. It's
poem license; an' that'll let you do anything."

Since then she had used the verse for every meal--except when she was
out of temper--and by substituting breakfast or supper for dinner, she
had a call that was conveniently universal.

The fact that she used it only when she was good-natured constituted
an unfailing barometer of the atmospheric condition of the kitchen,
and was really, in a way, no small convenience--especially for little
boys in quest of cookies or bread-and-jam. As for the master of the
house--this was not the first time he had threatened an energetic
warfare against that "absurd doggerel" (which he had cordially
abhorred from the very first); neither would it probably be the last
time that Susan's calm "Well, sir?" should send him into ignominious
defeat before the battle was even begun. And, really, after all was
said and done, there was still that one unfailing refuge for his
discomforted recollection: he could be thankful, when he heard it,
that she was good-natured; and with Susan that was no small thing to
be thankful for, as everybody knew--who knew Susan.

To-day, therefore, the defeat was not so bitter as to take all the
sweetness out of the "red-flannel" hash, and the frown on Daniel
Burton's face was quite gone when Susan brought in the dessert. Nor
did it return that night, even when Susan's shrill voice caroled
through the hall:

"Supper's ready, supper's ready,
Hurry up, or you'll be late,
Then you'll sure be cross and heady
If there's nothin' left to ate."